How to Use Facebook Analytics

Trying to find Facebook Analytics and feeling a bit lost? You’re not alone. The dedicated Facebook Analytics tool was discontinued in 2021, but this doesn’t mean your data has vanished. Instead, Meta has integrated these powerful reporting features directly into its other platforms. This guide will show you exactly where to find your organic page insights and paid campaign data, and more importantly, how to use them to make smarter decisions for your business.

What Happened to Facebook Analytics?

In mid-2021, Facebook officially sunset the standalone "Facebook Analytics" tool. The goal was to consolidate its various business tools into a more streamlined experience. While the dedicated platform is gone, all the core functionality - and then some - is now split between two primary places:

• Meta Business Suite: This is your command center for managing your Facebook page and Instagram profile. Its "Insights" section is where you’ll find all your organic performance data, from audience demographics to content engagement.
• Meta Ads Manager: This platform is purely dedicated to creating, managing, and analyzing your paid advertising campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and the Audience Network.

Think of it as dividing your analytics into two focused areas: organic performance (Business Suite) and paid performance (Ads Manager). Let’s break down how to use both.

Decoding Your Organic Performance with Meta Business Suite Insights

Your Meta Business Suite is the go-to source for understanding how your organic content is performing and who your audience is. This information is fundamental, as it tells you what resonates with your followers before you even spend a dollar on ads.

How to Find Your Insights Dashboard

Getting to your insights is straightforward:

1. Navigate to https://business.facebook.com/ and sign in.
2. From the left-hand menu, click on the "Insights" tab. It often has a small chart icon next to it.

Once you’re in, you’ll see an overview dashboard. This is a great starting point, but the real value comes from digging into the specific tabs: Results, Audience, and Content.

Key Organic Metrics to Track in Insights

Here’s a breakdown of the most valuable data you'll find in the Insights tab and how to interpret it.

1. Reach & Impressions (Results Tab)

The "Results" tab gives you a high-level overview of how many people are seeing your page and posts. Here you'll find:

• Facebook Page Reach: The number of unique people who saw any of your content.
• Impressions: The total number of times your content was displayed, whether it was clicked or not. One person could see your post three times, which would count as one for reach and three for impressions.

How to use this data: High reach with low engagement can signal that your content is being seen but isn't compelling enough to stop the scroll. Consistent reach growth over time is a positive sign that your content strategy aligns with what the algorithm and your audience want to see.

2. Audience Demographics (Audience Tab)

The "Audience" tab is arguably one of the most useful sections. It answers the critical question: "Who am I actually talking to?" Here you will find two subsets:

• Current Audience: This breaks down your existing page followers by age, gender, and location (top cities and countries).
• Potential Audience: This is an estimated audience size you could target based on filters you can set like location, age, gender, and interests. It's fantastic for market research.

How to use this data: Does your actual audience match your target customer profile? If you're a local business and see a lot of followers from another country, it might indicate you have spambots or your content is appealing to an unintended audience. Use these demographics to refine the tone, imagery, and topics of your content to better resonate with the people you’re trying to reach.

3. Content Performance (Content Tab)

This is where you can see how each individual post performed. You can sort by different metrics to identify trends. Key metrics to focus on include:

• Reach: How many unique people saw that specific post.
• Likes & Reactions: A quick measure of sentiment. A "love" or "Haha" reaction can signal a stronger connection than a simple "like."
• Comments: A strong indicator of engagement. Comments show that your content was compelling enough for someone to stop and type a response.
• Shares: Shares are a sign of high-value content. When someone shares your post, they are endorsing it to their own network.
• Link Clicks: If your goal is to drive traffic, this is a bottom-line metric.

How to use this data: Look for patterns. Do video posts consistently get more shares? Do posts with questions get more comments? Use these insights to create more of what works. If a post performed exceptionally well, consider boosting it with a small ad budget to extend its reach even further.

Analyzing Your Ad Campaigns in Meta Ads Manager

While Business Suite shows you your organic performance, Ads Manager is where you analyze your paid media. The level of detail here can be overwhelming, but focusing on the right metrics makes all the difference.

Navigating the Ads Manager Dashboard

First, it helps to understand the structure of an ad campaign in Meta:

• Campaign: The top level where you set your advertising objective (e.g., traffic, conversions, lead generation).
• Ad Set: The middle level where you define your targeting (audience), placement (where your ads appear), budget, and schedule.
• Ad: The bottom level where you create your ad creative (the image, video, caption, and headline).

You can analyze performance at each of these levels to see what's working and what's not.

Customizing Your View for Meaningful Data

The default columns in Ads Manager are a decent starting point, but to get a full picture, you need to customize them. This is the single most important skill for analyzing ad performance.

Follow these steps:

1. In Ads Manager, look for the "Columns" dropdown menu located above your results.
2. Select "Customize Columns..." at the bottom of the list.
3. A new window will pop up with dozens of selectable metrics. Use the search bar to find and check the boxes for the metrics that matter most to you.

Recommended Metrics to Add to Your View

Create a custom column preset with these metrics to get a comprehensive view of your ad performance:

• Frequency: The average number of times each person saw your ad. If this number gets too high (e.g., above 5-7), you risk "ad fatigue," where your audience starts tuning out your ads.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): This is the percentage of people who saw your ad and clicked on it. A low CTR could indicate your creative isn't compelling or your audience targeting is off.
• Cost Per Mille (CPM): The cost to reach 1,000 people. This is a baseline metric for understanding ad costs within your target audience. Rising CPMs can signal increased competition.
• Cost Per Result: If your objective is conversions, this tells you exactly how much you paid for each conversion (e.g., each purchase or lead). This is one of the most important metrics for judging campaign success.
• Conversion Rate: The percentage of people who clicked your ad and then took the desired action (like making a purchase). This helps you understand an ad’s effectiveness at not just generating clicks, but generating quality clicks.
• Return On Ad Spend (ROAS): This measures how much revenue you generated for every dollar you spent on ads. For e-commerce businesses, a ROAS above 3.0 or 4.0 is often considered a good benchmark, though this varies widely by industry.

Once you’ve selected your columns, you can save the preset and give it a name like "Standard KPI View.” Now, you can quickly switch to this view every time you check your ads.

From Data to Decisions: Making Your Analytics Actionable

Seeing the numbers is just one part of the puzzle. The real skill is using that data to make better decisions. Here are a few practical examples:

• Scenario: High CTR, Low Conversion Rate. The Problem: Lots of people are clicking your ad, but they aren't converting on your website or landing page. This suggests your ad is compelling, but the experience after the click is failing. The Action: Check your landing page. Is it slow to load? Is the message consistent with the ad? Is your call-to-action clear?
• Scenario: Ads in One Ad Set have a high ROAS, while another Ad Set is struggling. The Problem: You have a clear winning audience or creative combination. The Action: Shift more of your budget to the high-performing ad set. Analyze the differences between the two. Is it the audience? The image? The headline? Replicate the successful elements in future campaigns.
• Scenario: Your organic posts about a certain topic get exceptional engagement. The Problem: It's not a problem, it’s an opportunity! You have validated a content idea for free. The Action: Create a paid ad campaign based on this popular content. Since you already know the topic resonates with your audience, it's more likely to perform well as an ad. Turn that post into an engaging video ad or use the topic for a lead-generation campaign.

Final Thoughts

While the old, dedicated Facebook Analytics tool is gone, its spirit lives on in the powerful and focused analytics available in Meta Business Suite and Ads Manager. By regularly checking your organic page insights, you can refine your content strategy and build a stronger community. By mastering ad analysis in Ads Manager, you can ensure your ad dollars are working as hard as possible to grow your business.

Pulling data from both your organic efforts and paid campaigns - not to mention your other sales and marketing tools like Shopify or Google Analytics - to get a single view of performance can be a big undertaking. At our company, we built Graphed to simplify this exact process. We provide one-click integrations to connect all your data sources, including Meta Ads and Facebook Pages, so you can build real-time reports instantly with plain language. Instead of wrangling multiple CSV exports every week, you can just ask, "Show me how my total sales from Facebook Ads have trended over the last 90 days," and get a live, automated dashboard in seconds.